{"id":731992,"date":"2026-08-09T00:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731992\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T00:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:18:18","slug":"navy-says-it-is-spending-25-more-time-monitoring-russian-vessels-around-uk-waters-royal-navy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731992\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy says it is spending 25% more time monitoring Russian vessels around UK waters | Royal Navy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royal Navy<\/a> has warned of increasing Russian activity around the UK\u2019s waters after it spent 21 days in July monitoring Moscow\u2019s ships.<\/p>\n

Naval operations to monitor Russian vessels increased by 25% last month compared with the previous year, with warships making repeated voyages through the strait of Dover and the North Sea.<\/p>\n

Offshore patrol vessels HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn, alongside Wildcat helicopters from 815 Naval Air Squadron and Merlin submarine-hunting aircraft, were deployed throughout the month to shadow Russian frigates Neustrashimy and Admiral Grigorovich, which are tasked with escorting so-called \u201cshadow fleet\u201d tankers.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its annual report that Royal Navy vessels had been \u201cactivated\u201d 116 times in the year to March 2026, shadowing 61 Russian warships and 28 merchant vessels around the UK\u2019s waters.<\/p>\n

This reflected a 30% increase in Russian naval activity over the previous two years and included operations to deter the spy ship Yantar, which was spotted near undersea cables off Scotland last November.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin has been accused of using the Kremlin\u2019s shadow fleet of ageing vessels to evade international sanctions on its oil and fund the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The increase in Russian naval activity follows the seizure of the tanker Smyrtos<\/a> by Royal Marines in June, the first time British troops have directly boarded a shadow fleet vessel.<\/p>\n

The MoD said the diversion of ships from Russia to escort shadow fleet vessels meant the country was \u201cusing up valuable operational capacity to constantly guard cargo\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UK has already imposed sanctions on more than 500 vessels, and Russia\u2019s oil and gas revenues fell by 24% year on year in 2025.<\/p>\n

HMS Tyne was also tasked with monitoring the Neustrashimy as it carried out a live-firing exercise outside British and French waters on 20 July.<\/p>\n

Another ship, the frigate HMS Somerset, has been involved in monitoring Russian activity in the North Atlantic as part of a four-month Nato deployment searching for submarines, alongside helicopters from the Navy\u2019s Fleet Air Arm.<\/p>\n

Somerset\u2019s commanding officer, Cmdr Matt Millyard, said on Saturday: \u201cThis deployment demonstrates exactly what the Royal Navy exists to do: protect the UK and our allies from wherever our interests are threatened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am immensely proud of every single member of the ship\u2019s company for what we have achieved over the past four months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royal Navy has warned of increasing Russian activity around the UK\u2019s waters after it spent 21 days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-731992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}